Rivigo raises debt funding from Trifecta Capital

Gurugram-based tech-enabled logistics services provider, Rivigo Services Pvt. Ltd, has raised Rs 25 crore (approximately US$3.46 million at current exchange rates) in debt funding from venture debt firm, Trifecta Capital.

Rivigo has issued non-convertible debentures to Trifecta. The NCDs have a tenor of 24 months and carry a fixed rate of 14.25 per cent to be paid monthly, according to a report.

The firm is also in talks to raise its Series F round. In December, it inked an agreement with at least two key investors – the US-based Warburg Pincus and multi-stage investment firm SAIF Partners – for Rs 142 crore in fresh funding.

Founded in 2014 by Deepak Garg and Gazal Kalra, Rivigo offers pan-India delivery services to e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, cold-chain, and FMCG companies. An IIT Kanpur graduate, Garg was working with McKinsey & Company before co-founding the venture. Kalra, an alumnus of Stanford Graduate School of Business, also worked at McKinsey.

The company operates with a ‘relay trucking’ model, wherein truck drivers do not operate their vehicles for more than five hours at a stretch and return to their home the same day.

In July last year, the company raised US$65 million in its Series E funding round led by Warburg and SAIF. In April 2015, SAIF Partners pumped in US$9.6 million in Rivigo in its Series A round. In December 2015, Rivigo mobilised US$30 million in its Series B round.

This is the second logistics-technology firm that Trifecta has reportedly issued funding. In November, the Gurugram-based venture firm committed Rs 56 crore in mixed equity and debt funding to Blackbuck.

The startup’s board had approved allotting Trifecta 322 Series D compulsorily convertible preference shares and 500 Series, a non-convertible debentures.

The venture debt provider was set up in 2014 by Nilesh Kothari and Rahul Khanna and manages a corpus of Rs 500 crore. RBL Bank and Azim Premji Trust are the anchor investors in its first fund, from which Trifecta provides early-stage debt capital to technology companies. It also looks to acquire stakes in companies through cashless warrants or partly paid-up shares. It has invested over 40 companies, including NoBroker, Bigbasket, Paper Boat, Rivigo Nephroplus, Urban Ladder, Industrybuying, OneAssist, UrbanClap, and IdeaForge.

Investor interest in the logistics-technology segment has increased in recent months as startups seek to provide new-age services at scale and affordable prices. Apart from Rivigo, a number of logistics-tech ventures have raised a large amount of capital. This includes SoftBank- and Carlyle-backed Delhivery, Warburg-backed Ecom Express, and Goldman Sachs-backed BlackBuck.

In November last year, Info Edge (India) Ltd, which owns and operates portals such as job site Naukri.com, led a pre-Series A funding round in digital logistics platform Shipsy. Gurugram-based Shipsy said it would use the funds for its sales and marketing efforts, and broadening the product offerings under its exporter-importer platform.

In May, the logistics management startup Locus raised US$22 million in its Series B funding round led by Falcon Edge Capital and Tiger Global Management LLC.